Sabrina Kilian wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> Alain wrote:
>>> Have you tryed "cheating"?
>> I saw a great tool for tunneling IP over DNS.
>>
> 
> What next, IP via Morse Code timed SNMP pings? The check sums would need
> work, one faulty router in the middle and S turns into O.

I saw an RFC for IP carried by Carrier Pigeons, once :)

-- 
...Ben Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Fredrik Eriksson wrote:
>> At what point was that? Even MS-DOS let you have extensionless files.
> 
> Heck, CP/M let you have extensionless files. :-)

yes, for old systems like Unix and all, extensions are just part of the 
name, nothing special.  I was under the impression that on Windows it 
was just another artificial limitation imposed on users, like GUIs and 
dialog boxes...

Post a reply to this message

nemesis nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 2008/01/30 12:59:
> Darren New wrote:
>> Fredrik Eriksson wrote:
>>> At what point was that? Even MS-DOS let you have extensionless files.
>>
>> Heck, CP/M let you have extensionless files. :-)
> 
> yes, for old systems like Unix and all, extensions are just part of the 
> name, nothing special.  I was under the impression that on Windows it 
> was just another artificial limitation imposed on users, like GUIs and 
> dialog boxes...
Old name storage limitation when the names where in the 8.3 format. 8 characters 
for the name, of whitch you must use from 1 to 8, and an extention for an extra 
3 characters for the extention, hence the term "extention". Those could cary 0 
to 3 characters. The content of the extention is purely arbitrary, with some 
having specific, reserved, signification.

-- 
Alain
-------------------------------------------------
Sometimes my love of the arcane combines with my askew humor to make me 
unintelligible!!

Post a reply to this message

nemesis wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> Fredrik Eriksson wrote:
>>> At what point was that? Even MS-DOS let you have extensionless files.
>>
>> Heck, CP/M let you have extensionless files. :-)
> 
> yes, for old systems like Unix and all, extensions are just part of the 
> name, nothing special.

That's the same on Windows, Unix, and CP/M.  The only difference is how 
the command line and/or libraries parse the names.

CP/M had 11-digit names. Most command-line utilities interpreted a dot 
as "fill with spaces to the 8th character", and a "*" as "fill with 
question marks to either the 8th or 11th character, whichever comes 
first."  Basically.  There certainly wasn't any "." or 8.3 on the disk.

Windows just stores the dot, at least on NTFS volumes. FAT volumes still 
have the 11-character limitation (which is where you get 11-character 
volume names) until you get the "extended names" (which are encoded 
names stored in directory entries marked as "deleted").

UNIX original (as in v7) had 14-character names, because they had 
16-character slots in directories with 2-byte inode numbers.

Nowadays, it's all pretty opened up. But there's nothing that enforces 
anything in Windows to use particular extensions for particular types of 
files, except maybe executable EXE and DLL files. (Not even sure about 
that.)

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     On what day did God create the body thetans?

Post a reply to this message

On Wed, 30 Jan 2008 21:27:06 -0800, Darren New wrote:

> Nowadays, it's all pretty opened up. But there's nothing that enforces
> anything in Windows to use particular extensions for particular types of
> files, except maybe executable EXE and DLL files. (Not even sure about
> that.)

ISTR that it used to be (at least) with DOS that the interpreter/shell 
(ie, command.com) had special handlers for .com and .exe and that you 
couldn't execute a program with.  That said, I do know that the exec... 
and spawn... C functions could launch any file as an executable (used to 
do this myself, actually - replacing a login.exe file with a custom-
written wrapper that exec'ed a login.nov executable).

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:
> ISTR that it used to be (at least) with DOS that the interpreter/shell 
> (ie, command.com) had special handlers for .com and .exe and that you 
> couldn't execute a program with. 

I'm not sure what that means. But yeah, I don't necessarily count 
Explorer (for example) as "part of the OS". It's just a shell.

But that's what I meant by "except maybe EXE and DLL files". I'm not 
sure if the extension is required to be there for some of the exec/spawn 
type calls to work.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     On what day did God create the body thetans?

Post a reply to this message

On Thu, 31 Jan 2008 21:14:54 -0800, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> ISTR that it used to be (at least) with DOS that the interpreter/shell
>> (ie, command.com) had special handlers for .com and .exe and that you
>> couldn't execute a program with.

Whoops, I meant "without those extensions", and then my brain kicked in 
and reminded me that it was command.com that did that, not the DOS kernel.

> I'm not sure what that means. But yeah, I don't necessarily count
> Explorer (for example) as "part of the OS". It's just a shell.

Yep.

> But that's what I meant by "except maybe EXE and DLL files". I'm not
> sure if the extension is required to be there for some of the exec/spawn
> type calls to work.

At least in DOS, it's not.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Thu, 31 Jan 2008 21:14:54 -0800, Darren New wrote:
>> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> I'm not sure what that means. But yeah, I don't necessarily count
>> Explorer (for example) as "part of the OS". It's just a shell.
> 
> Yep.

so what?  Unless you go calling kernel subroutines by hand just to 
overcome the limitations the shell imposes, the shell and its 
idiosyncrasies is what you, as an user, is limited to.

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 01 Feb 2008 17:04:28 -0200, nemesis wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Thu, 31 Jan 2008 21:14:54 -0800, Darren New wrote:
>>> Jim Henderson wrote:
>>> I'm not sure what that means. But yeah, I don't necessarily count
>>> Explorer (for example) as "part of the OS". It's just a shell.
>> 
>> Yep.
> 
> so what?

As a DOS programmer, that's a very significant difference.

> Unless you go calling kernel subroutines by hand just to
> overcome the limitations the shell imposes, the shell and its
> idiosyncrasies is what you, as an user, is limited to.

I don't believe I ever said I was just a user.  In fact, I used to write 
DOS-based programs quite regularly to accomplish specific tasks, 
including using undocumented DOS calls to make it do things outside of 
what the "normal" DOS BIOS functions would allow.

Hands up, all those here who know what INT21 is without looking it up.

Bonus points for those who can describe INT2F and how it relates to INT21 
functions.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

nemesis wrote:
> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Thu, 31 Jan 2008 21:14:54 -0800, Darren New wrote:
>>> Jim Henderson wrote:
>>> I'm not sure what that means. But yeah, I don't necessarily count
>>> Explorer (for example) as "part of the OS". It's just a shell.
>>
>> Yep.
> 
> so what?  Unless you go calling kernel subroutines by hand just to 
> overcome the limitations the shell imposes, the shell and its 
> idiosyncrasies is what you, as an user, is limited to.

Uh, yeah, most programmers call kernel subroutines by hand.

My point being that all the stuff about file extensions meaning certain 
things, and ".gif" files being images etc, is all handled by explorer. 
If you want to have ".c" files be images and compile C source code 
stored in ".jpg" files, nothing prevents you.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     On what day did God create the body thetans?

Post a reply to this message